Having a real relationship with your customers is vitally important, so here are 5 great ways you can interact better with them.

Make Interactions Easy

The first place to start is by looking at how interactions between your business and its customers take place. If they are messy and complicated, people are not going to have any interest in communicating with you, so make things easier.

When your customers have a problem, your team needs to be able to sort things out quickly, otherwise you might end up losing the customer forever. Let them file complaints in person, on the phone, via email or over social media. This variety of options makes the process easier for them.

Train Your Staff in Basic Customer Service Skills

Every business needs to know how to deal with customers, but this is no good unless your employees know how to get the basics of customer services right too. If they don’t, you need to focus on training them so that they do.

You can send them away on a training course, or, if that’s too expensive, you can train them by yourself. It’s really not that complicated. There are certain questions and situations that arise when working in customer services departments, so make sure these areas are covered.

Participate in Community Events

Talking to customers and people in the community isn’t something that should only be done when you’re trying to sell something to them. You should try to prove to people that you’re interested in being part of the wider community.

So, get out there and participate in all the different community events that bring people together and get people talking. It will improve your business too though. If people get to know your business and like you as a business owner, they’ll want to buy from you more.

Keep People Up to Date

Customers need to be kept up to date with regards to changes that might be relevant to them. It’s a way of keeping them in the loop rather than shutting them out of things. It’s also a great way of reminding people that you’re still out there and open for business.

You can do this by sending out a weekly or monthly e-newsletter. To do this, you first need to build up a collection of email addresses. Ask people to submit their email address when they land on your homepage to collect as many as possible.

Create a Blog

If you need to build up a community around your brand and attract new people to the business, you should start your own blog. You’ll be able to prove to people that you’re an authority in your sector.

All you need to do is make sure you’re creating blog posts that are filled with relevant facts that can engage the kind of people who are important to a business like yours. It might seem challenging at first, but you’ll get there.